The Trump administration took
aim at two Obama-era environmental policies on Thursday to boost
the oil and coal industries, proposing to open up a bird's
wildlife habitat to drilling and mining and remove hurdles to
new coal-fired power plant construction.

The moves, part of a broader agenda by U.S. President Donald
Trump to revive the ailing coal industry and ramp up domestic
energy production, come amid increasingly urgent warnings from
within his own government about climate change, and as world
leaders gather at a United Nations conference to combat
planetary warming.

Announced separately by Trump appointees who were both
former energylobbyists, the proposals cheered the coal and oil
industries but triggered an uproar from environmental groups who
raised the prospect of legal challenges.

"Trump and his deputies are delivering on the wish list of
the coal and oil industries, but they are up against the public
and market demand for clean energy," said Mary Anne Hitt, senior
director of Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign.

The U.S. Interior Department proposed easing Obama-era
protections for a bird, the greater sage-grouse, to boost oil
drilling and mining across Western states, potentially opening
up hundreds of thousands of acres of grouse habitat in states
like Colorado and Utah to oil and gas leasing.

Announced by Interior Department Deputy Secretary David
Bernhardt, a Colorado native and a formerenergy lobbyist, the
proposal would allow for changes to habitat boundary maps of the
chicken-sized prairie fowl - considered by conservationists to
be a key indicator species for America’s dwindling sagebrush
ecosystem.

The Obama administration had launched the plan to protect
the sage-grouse in September 2015 as an alternative to listing
the ground-dwelling bird under the Endangered Species Act, a
move that would potentially have entailed even tougher habitat
protections. The oil and mining industries, however, have said
the limits to development are overreaching.

Also on Thursday, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
proposed rolling back an Obama-era rule requiring new U.S. coal
plants to slash carbon emissions, a move that could crack open
the door in coming years for new plants fired by the fossil
fuel.

Rejecting criticism that the move would potentially increase
carbon emissions, acting EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler, a
former coal lobbyist, argued that the move would encourage
cleaner coal investments in the United States, which would then
be exported worldwide and help reduce global emissions.

It is unclear if the move will spur any new construction of
coal plants in the United States, however, as many utilities
turn to cheaper natural gas and renewables like solar and wind
energy. The U.S. government lists only two major coal-fired
power plants scheduled to come online over the next five years,
with more than 70 scheduled to retire over the same period.

Since taking office in January 2017, Trump has made a habit
of rolling back Obama-era environmental and climate protections
to maximize production of domestic fossil fuels, including crude
oil. U.S. oil production is already the highest in the world,
above Saudi Arabia and Russia, after a boom that was triggered
more than a decade ago by improved drilling technology.

Trump's agenda to encourage more fossil fuels use clashes
with a congressionally mandated government report that came out
last month saying climate change is driven mainly by human
activity and will cost the U.S. economy hundreds of billions of
dollars by the end of the century.

The White House has discounted the report, saying it fails
to account for potential advances in technology that could make
burning fossil fuels cleaner in the future.
(Editing by Richard Valdmanis and Tom Brown)

(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)